Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Robert Frost’S Ulteriority: Saying One Thing In Terms Of Another – The Inexpressible, Nicolette S. Stackhouse

Honors Theses

Robert Frost’s poetry, which is famously rich in double meaning—saying one thing but meaning something else—is also concerned with pragmatism. Pragmatism implies that there is no one fundamental universal truth. I contend that Robert Frost’s poetry says that duplicity of meaning, or ulteriority, is something to be embraced. Frost wants the uncertainty of meaning to be understood by the reader as vital to life and the mind’s processes. The simple fact that so many readers search for the hidden meanings in his poetry justly proves this point. As a pragmatist, Frost was aware that the process of getting to a …

The Threat At Court: Subversive Uses Of Translation, Transcription, And Tradition In The Henrician Court, Rebecca Marie Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to consider the use, at the Henrician court, of the strategies of translation, transcription, and tradition to cushion and to code the presentation of dangerous and radical ideas. Each of these strategies allows the authors deniability, while nonetheless allowing them to communicate clearly with their readers. These writers speak in a code that can be interpreted by anyone at court, but use that code to create just enough distance to avoid overt confrontation with the king. This is further complicated, though, by the king’s own deeply influential role in the creation of that code. Each strategy also …

[Re]Visiting The Rime: A Case Study Of Adaptation As Process And Product With The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Sally Ferguson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combines adaptation theory with ecology to examine Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and its adaptations; it argues further combinations of adaptation with evolutionary theory and ecological ideas could allow for a better interpretation of many texts. The adaptation Rime of the Modern Mariner (2011) by Nick Hayes and the appropriation Perelandra (1943) by C.S. Lewis will also be present in individual chapters to examine the texts' interactions with each other as they evolve and how each work represents the combined theory.

Dandy As Disease: Gender Hygiene And British Nineteenth-Century Literature, Sharon Louise Fox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Dandy as Disease: Gender Hygiene and British Nineteenth-century Literature” explores the link between the nineteenth-century dandy, ideas of hegemonic masculinity, and Walter Besant’s The Revolt of Man, a dystopian text in which women have usurped all traditionally-masculine roles, while men are the caretakers and manual workers. The first chapter deals with the historical role of the dandy in the nineteenth-century and how he might be viewed as the cause of the fall of Britain. The second chapter revolves around Besant’s novel, exploring how men are shown to be at fault for Britain’s fall in the eyes of the rest of …

Telling New Tales: Modernizations Of Chaucer In The Eighteenth Century, Eric Duane Larson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Any review of medieval culture and literature in the British eighteenth century requires some consideration for the modernizations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Effectively a collaboration that spanned the entire century, this project began with Dryden and Pope and continued in earnest with lesser-known poets like George Ogle and William Lipscomb. The resulting modernization of every Chaucerian tale between 1700 and 1795 revisits medieval themes, but it also displays contemporary anxieties through presentations of language, content, style, and rhetorical intent that are sometimes vastly different from Chaucer’s originals.

The modernization project is worthy of study, in particular because it reflects, across …

“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the complexities of civilian identity and the crisis of gender in twentieth century fiction produced after World War I. Of central concern are four novels written by prominent women authors, novels that deal with themes of trauma, violence, and shifting gender roles in a post-war society: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s Room. Although these novels do not directly portray the battlefield experiences of war, I argue that, at their core, they are “war novels” in the fullest sense, concerned with the …

Close Reading Workshop, Nida Islam

Senior Honors Projects

Close reading is an in-depth analysis of a text’s features (e.g., syntax, punctuation, tone, and vocabulary) to acquire a comprehensive understanding of a piece of literature. At the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in 2001, Robert Scholes, a retired professor of English at Brown University, voiced his concern about the lack of ability in freshly enrolled college students to engage with the intricacy of texts. Jane Gallop, Professor of English at University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, further argues the interdisciplinary benefits of close reading and attests to the consequences of students’ inability to perform intense reading of literature. As a …

The World Of The Cat's Table: Literature Through Production Design Analysis, Andrea J. Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje is a rich piece of literature that has a diverse set of characters confined to one pivotal location, a ship. Just as the novel builds a world around its characters, in this project I attempted to build a space around immersive design choices.

Production Design is a visual response to analytic reading. By taking a written piece or concept and creating the physical/visual atmosphere for the work, a production designer’s job is to create the overall look and tone of a creative production, be it for a film, play, or museum space. This is …

When In Doubt: An Exploration Of The Role Of The Oracle In The Harry Potter Series, Emily J. Milner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The popular Harry Potter series serves as the basis for my study of the oracles that appear throughout the series. By focusing specifically on Professor Sybill Trelawney, Ron Weasley, and the Sorting Hat, I show the relationships between Harry Potter and the Oracles. I also focus on a few of Trelawney's various methods of Divination and her prophecies.

Transforming The Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’S "High Society" With George Cukor’S "The Philadelphia Story" As An Emphasis On The Importance Of Theatre, Dana T. Speight Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, …

A Lusty Bacheler: The Language Of Sexualization And Status In The Squire’S Portrait, Jessica D'Aquin

Senior Honors Theses

Chaucer scholars often neglect the Squire in their treatment of the Canterbury Tales, making it is necessary to reassess the Squire’s relation to the Roman de la Rose and the ways in which he is satirized through the parallels between his portrait and the Roman. Upon further examination of the Squire’s portrait, it becomes apparent that the Squire is part of a larger satiric discourse on people who use their vocation for personal gain in the Canterbury Tales by means of comparison to Fausemblant of the Roman. Through careful scrutiny of the language of the Squire’s portrait, this thesis analyzes …

Literature As Virtual Reality: An Exploration Of Subjectivity Formation In The Digital Era, Jessica Danielle Schnebelen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project traces a line of developing subjectivity in the history of mediation. Using Jacque Lacan’s mirror stage to emphasize the relationship between Social identification and self formation, I suggest literary virtual realities further our understanding of human-technology relationships. Examining the evolution of eighteenth and nineteenth century sympathetic consciousness reveals a subjectivity intricately bound to both cognitive and physical spaces. The emergence of the virtual body complicates this consciousness by obscuring physicality and mixing man and machine. To trace this consciousness this project looks at the work of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and a contemporary television writer, Charlie Brooker. These …

Images Of The Other: Race, Gender, And The Imperial Relationship In Heart Of Darkness, A Passage To India, And Burmese Days, Samantha A. Mason

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores themes of race, gender, and the imperial relationship found in three anti-imperial novels and additional related works. In Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness the narrator Marlow and, by extension Conrad himself, systematically silences all African and female voices throughout the novel, effectively making Marlow, a white man, the only person capable of speaking about the horrors of imperialism. Marlow abhors the exploitation of imperialism, but admires the "civilizing" idea behind it, making him a problematic representative for anti-imperial sentiment. In E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, the main perspective shifts to that of an …

Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, And The Canterbury Tales: Parallels In The Comic Genius Of Henry Fielding And Geoffrey Chaucer, Zachary A. Canter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The parallels between the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Henry Fielding are very striking. Both authors produced some of the greatest works in English literature, yet very little scholarly investigation has been done regarding these two in relationship with one another. In this work I explore the characters of Chaucer’s Parson and Parson Adams, assessing their strengths and weaknesses through pastoral guides by Gregory the Great and George Herbert, while drawing additional conclusions from John Dryden. I examine the episodic, theatrical nature of both authors’ works, along with the inclusion of fabliau throughout. Finally, I look at the shared motif …

Keats And America: Attitudes And Appropriations, Jessica Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While John Keats never traveled to America and only wrote a handful of admittedly hostile lines about it in his poetry, American writers and readers have consistently regarded Keats as one of the greatest and most influential poets of the past two centuries. His critical reputation in America has been stable since the 1840s, enduring throughout changing tastes and movements, and his biography and work have been utilized in manifold appropriations by American poets and writers. I examine Keats’s attitude toward the United States—which was in conflict with the general feeling regarding the country by his fellow Romantic poets—and briefly …

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the stories, reading them …

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous Women Of Dracula And Carmilla, Judith Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent to which deviation from Socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s violent deaths in the …

A Band Of Sisters: Female Detectives, Authority, And Fiction From 1864 To The 1930s, Amanda Renee Schafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Because mystery and detective fiction have been classified as “popular” genres, the complex ideas and ideologies that the authors work with and within reach a wide and varied audience through formulaic and familiar ways. The perceived conservatism of the genre allows authors to present and pursue distinctly anti-conservative views in disguise. For fictional detectives and, especially female detectives, disguise is an effective tool for solving their cases. Often, these detectives will disguise themselves as someone infinitely more conservative than they are in order to gain access to their quarry. Similarly, mystery and detective fiction wear a cloak of conservatism to …

A Watchman On The Walls: Ezekiel And Reaction To Invasion In Anglo-Saxon England, Max K. Brinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Viking Age, the Christian Anglo-Saxons in England found warnings and solace in the biblical text of Ezekiel. In this text, the God of Israel delivers a dual warning: first, the sins of the people call upon themselves divine wrath; second, it is incumbent upon God’s messenger to warn the people of their extreme danger, or else find their blood on his hands. This thesis examines how the Anglo-Saxon applied Ezekiel’s warnings to their own cultural crisis. It begins with the early development of this philosophy by the Britons in the 500s, its adoption by the Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and …

Review Of Amy Culley, British Women’S Life Writing, 1760-1840, Elizabeth Zold

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.